Keeping German Blue Ramirezi

Hi Guys and Gals

After a recent loss of my German Blue Ram pair I would like to create a Tasa fact sheet for keeping this species in South African conditions. I had read a lot about the species prior to purchasing them but due to their loss I have learnt quite a bit more so far. Please comment/contribute/correct. Thanks.

Here is the information I understood to be correct from the information I had read:

Common Name: German Blue Rams
Scientific name: Mikrogeophagus Ramirezi
Family: Cichlids
Subfamily: Geophaginae
Geographical Location: South America (Venezuela and Columbia)
Water Temperature: 25 - 30 degrees
PH: 5-7
Size: 5-7cm
Temprament: Fairly peaceful unless spawning. Slow moving.
Identification: Males - High dorsal fin (with a pronounced black spiking at the front) with no blue marking on the black spot in the middle of the body. Females - Smaller, pink underbelly with blue dots on the black spot on the side of the body.
Suitability: Not recommended for beginner Aquarist

Tank Requirements:
Tank Size: 75l per GBR
Decor/Foliage: Dense plants with open swimming spaces, caves to seek shelter and flat rock for spawning.
Feeding: GBR's are omnivores will accept flake food, sinking pellets and live and frozen mosquito larvae.
Water Quality/Filtration: GBR's are sensitive to organic waste and require clear water and the correct PH. Frequent water changes are required. Slow flowing water.
Tank Mates: GBR's are best kept with peaceful species of a similar size and disposition that will leave food for them. They should be kept in a ratio of 2 females per male. Aggresive or fast moving species as well as other cichlids are not recommended. A few of the compatable species would be neon/cardinal/black phantom tetra, dwarf gouramis, rainbows, synodontis catfish, discus.
Breeding: GBR's are egg layers and will lay approximately 20-500 eggs per spawn. Spawning is done on a suitable flat surface. They are a monogamous species where both parents are involved in caring for their young. They are sexually mature from 4-6 months. They will require soft water and a temperature of approximately 28degrees. When they are ready for spawning they will clean a flat rock or dig a hollow in the substrate. They will do a "mating dance" and then the female will deposit the adhesive eggs (approximately 1mm in size). The parents will take it in turns to protect and fan water over the eggs (The fanning is to eliminate bacteria and fungis). The parents will also eat unfertile eggs to prevent disease. Eggs will hatch after about 40hrs, fry will become free swimming after about 5 days and about 6 months to mature into adults . The fry will be kept close to the parents and will be accompanied by a parent when looking for food. Spawning can occur on a monthly basis. Parents are known to eat the eggs when stressed but allowing a pair to raise fry naturally is highly recommended.


Ok, thats the first bit. Phew...

 

Here is a quote from the Prof that he posted on my disease thread which I would like to add so we can start seeing the differences:

" You are not the first person to have rams die on you like this, there have been many, many, many before you, it is largely not your fault. However, the question obviously is why so many folks have problems with rams. Now you don't also want a smart-ass giving you clever dick advice after everything has kicked the bucket, so I would like to apologize for this in advance, but these are in my opinion the reasons for the problems.

First of all, rams are actually not easy to keep at all, and should not be sold in the way they are in LFS, they are not a beginner fish and to keep them going all the time is about as difficult as keeping discus, and I say this because I have kept and bred both, and believe me, rams also die on me in this way. Rams actually need very low pH, far below the pH 7 of your tank. They come from the Rio Orinoco which has extremely soft and very acid water. Also this river flows very strongly and bacterial numbers are very low. From the pic you show and the bacterial growth on the pipe in the tank, and that gunk that I asked you about, I can see that you have high bacterial numbers in your tank, that burdens the system and means that there is an excess of nutrients from feeding in the tank.

I think your fishes have died from internal bacterial problems, possibly also flagellates as Marco mentioned, but this was also caused by water at the wrong pH and actually I think you are adding far to many additives to the water. Then your diet is rich in proteins but does not contain any roughage. You are not feeding any frozen mosquito larvae, note I am not saying bloodworm because I would not feed rams bloodworm at all, but rather white mosquito larvae or live black mosquito larvae. Perhaps also some frozen cyclops. If you do not feed any roughage the food accumulates in the gut, some gets digested, but it does not move fast enough and the bacteria can then grow in the food whilst it sits in the gut.

I would also definitely reduce the total number of fishes in your tank. No guppies, no ancistrus, only a few corys and some harlequins, but if you have so many fishes you have to feed more and that then causes water quality problems.

Finally, the source of rams definitely plays a major role in whether rams will survive or not. I think we are actually seeing a new racket now in SA with rams. Previously rams that came from Singapore and Malaysia died like flies after a few weeks of arrival in SA because they had been fed a diet containing a constant amount of antibiotics to protect them against the problems that you have picked up. These fishes were completely useless because as soon as these fishes were then sold and no longer fed the antibiotics they would just die of internal infections because they have no resistance to them. Because of this the rams from the Singapore and Malaysia actually got this bad reputation to the extent that their sales of these fishes went down.

In Germany the folks stopped buying rams from Singapore and Malaysia years ago because of the problems that I have just described but also because the Germans wanted to have rams that can raise their young themselves. They believe that fishes must do things naturally and that the spawning activity and natural raising is what specifically was very attractive in these fishes. If you take the eggs away from the parents and raise them artificially and if you do this for more than one generation they loose the ability to raise their young themselves. The Germans started breeding rams from wildcaught fishes and selected them for large size and colour, but they always raised them with their parents. These fishes then became known as German blue rams. Now, in the Czech Republic they have very good and soft water and they realized that there was a good market for selling fishes back to Germany. They were then very careful and bought rams from Germany, bred them but raised them with their parents and sold them back to Germany and the Germans were very happy with the fishes that they had bought. However, the fish breeders from Singapore and Malaysia had lost market share and were not happy. So they bought so-called German blue rams from the Czechs, took them back to Singapore and Malaysia and started the same nonsense again with these fishes. They took babies away and fed them antibiotics, BUT NOW THEY SELL THEM AS GERMAN BLUE RAMS. So the public thinks they are getting good quality German rams but we are back to square one, the same old racket and rubbish fishes leading to your problems and frustrations.

So to all of you my advice is that you must really find out if your German Rams are truely German before you start and not be caught out with this nonsense. Besides that just simply don't even think that rams are like other tropicals, immediately think of a species tank and of high filtration rates, good feeding and good water. Without this rams are a BIG DISSAPPOINTMENT, don't even think that you can keep them in a normal community tank.

Kind regards,

Dirk"

Thanks again for this information @Dirk

 

I'm merely making an observation.:flute:
In my opinion,it is better to have a stable pH than the correct pH.

 

Hi DewaldC - I generally agree but when it comes to certain species (ie discus, from what I've read, and GBR's) the correct PH is required.

 

Hi Marc,

I want to make a few comments about what you wrote as the species information:

I would not recommend that you keep them at temps below 28C, but that means you cannot keep them with many others fishes and some plants also don't like these high temps.

My recommendation for pH would be around 4-5, definitely not above 6 even.

Feeding my advice would be not to overfeed. One thinks that a ram with a big belly would be good for it, but I actually think this is dangerous as it can cause internal bacterial problems.

I am not quite in agreement that they are slow moving, sure they move around slowly, but they can also dart around and move around very quickly.

I do not think that one should keep them at a ratio of one male to two females. Rams are very strongly pair bonded once they have paired off and I would keep them in pairs, much better, otherwise you have females that have to protect themselves against pairs and they do not have a chance because they are outnumbered, next thing they will be dead!

DewaldC, I would agree about stable pH with discus, but with rams I would only say low pH, if they are kept at higher pH they do not like it.

What I also want to add about the breeding is that if you have rams from Singapore and Malaysia they will lay eggs and they will eat them repeatedly, they have lost the ability to raise their young naturally. I find this unacceptable. A pair of rams looking after their babies is a beautiful sight and is what one actually also buys them for.

When keeping rams one must to regular water changes with soft water without all sorts of additives. Even the dechlorinators burden the water with too many chemicals and can cause problems. In this instance use water that has been aerated in a bucket overnight. If your water is not really soft then add RO water to the water that you do your water changes with.

And then use a filter that has a sizable filter capacity for filter wool or sponge for mechanical filteration and ceramic rings or the such like for biological filtration. Rams will definitely benefit from organic substances such as rooibos tea and peat and peat extracts. However when using peat, you need to be careful not to drop the pH too low, and remember that in the lower pH ranges in soft water the strip and drop kits for measuring pH are often not able to measure the pH properly.

Remember also that rams cousins, Bolivian rams, are completely different types of fishes, are not nearly as colourful, and are a lot more aggressive and get larger. They are not nearly as sensitive as true rams and can handle poorer water conditions. However, as far as I am concerned, I would not even think of them as a replacement for true rams.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

@Dirk - Thank you. I intend to neaten this all up in a day or two and and give a summary at the end. Even if I'm the only person interested :bigsmile:. So please continue to add any thoughts as we go along. I gave a basic summary of what is indicated in general reading of the species and already we are seeing vital differences.

Thanks, Marc

 

@MarcHawke I am very happy you made this thread, I want to keep rams and I am trying to get correct info on them, this will help me and I'm sure others too who want to keep rams, I also want to thank Prof Dirk as what he said added to the whole thing and I know what he says is true.

 

Apologies to anybody reading this thread. I promised to tidy this up but I st haven't got around to it. I will sort it out asap.
Thanks @Fishie Mitchie - They are beautiful fish, worth knowing as much as possible about, and I WILL keep them again soon!